spiritfall
by miriya v
Summary: A vignette about one finding a home in the Heart of Darkness. (Auron-centric, seinen-ai, lyric wheel challenge)


Gonna keep this short, just like I promise every time. Skuld-chan, loved the poemling. Looking forward to everyone else's entries, and sorry for taking so long on mine. I got kinda...sidetracked. And smacked with a big ol' dose of writer's block. Natch.  
  
Anyway, the characters in this fic aren't mine, even though I seem to have forgotten to add names throughout the whole thing. But it's intentional, and my sentences are still disjointed. Maybe I should go to sleep? e.e;; There aren't any warnings, except for the fact that this particular male figure is reminiscing about other male figures in a more-than-friendly way. You're warned.  
  
Expect me to go quiet here in a week or two -- I'm taking a trip to Montucky to visit my folks, and drag yet another of my bored-out-of-his- mind friends down here to play in Tucson for a few weeks -- should be back the 25th, or maybe a little earlier/later. I'm not sure that my family knows what a computer is really /for/, yet.  
  
Short, yes. I'm shutting up now. Hope you don't hate this one.  
  
  
  
spiritfall  
  
a ffx fic by miriya valentine  
  
- - -  
  
it doesn't leave a scratch,  
  
so therefore no one's hurt  
  
-tori amos  
  
- - -  
  
There is no place that feels more alone than the Heart of Pure Darkness. There is no hope, no reassurance, only infinite and unyielding lonliness.  
  
So he lights a candle. There are three, standing lonely, sentinel guard in the space before him, as invisible as his own hands to his single unseeing eye. Once, his eyes had been considered remarkable, the warm color of cinnamon, rich and inviting. His first love said he'd loved his eyes. His second was content to stare into them when he thought he wasn't paying attention. But now, the warmth has faded and dulled, both his loves have left him long ago, and his remaining eye is just one more testament to how his life has changed -- his single living eye is the color of rust, the color of dry blood. The other is dead, drawn closed and shuttered forever by the scarred remain of heavy eyelid.  
  
He is bound to the ground only by gravity, and perhaps the heavy weight of his heart. It is more than enough. He doesn't know if he can stand, even if he tries.  
  
The candle light, at first only a pin-point of light in the empty room, has grown, surging upwards in tiny bounds until he can see the curving lines of his own two hands. He leans forward, lights the second, then blows out the match. He watches absently as the thin stream of smoke curls and billows, the candle's fragile light catching the fading wisps like dust motes in a sunbeam.  
  
He has broken the Heart of Darkness. He knows exactly how it feels.  
  
Perhaps it is a trick of the light, or maybe his own wishful thinking, and he wonders for a moment if the first candle is blue-hued, the second crimson: beneath his fingernails, the wax is a dirty white.  
  
Five fingers, he thinks, and spreads them out before the simple light. One for the first flame, the dancing summoner who stole his heart before he even realized he had one, or understood what it meant. Another for the second, the stranger with a heart as soft as his tongue was sharp, who made him wonder if there would be something left for him after the calm; the one who did all the things he could not. One for his own life. One for his own death. And one that seems like it would fit snugly within the empty space in his heart.  
  
It would be something. But not enough. He wonders if the blood still flows within him, and if it is warm.  
  
He closes his eye. Maybe then, the pain will ease.  
  
He is drowning in time. Not that it matters, for he is already dead, a corpse trapped among the living. This he knows, but still his feet move, still his heart beats, still he keeps his promises. He knows the end will come again for him again, and this time he will be ready.  
  
He touched it once, when he first died -- nothing like the farplane-theatre that graced cavernous Guadosalam. There were no shimmering pyreflies to dance in his wake, nor any welcoming arms to bring him into peace. He thought he might like to stay there a while. There was no blinding joy, but it did not hurt -- his frost-devoured, broken body did not ache, his mind did not tear itself apart in futile equations of how to turn back the time.  
  
His heart had betrayed him then, but he supposed it really couldn't be held at fault -- he had given it away willingly, and it had returned in bits and pieces, pulling him back from the emptiness, filling him with life as false as the teachings of Yevon. Sometimes he wonders why he accepted it at all, and then he remembers something, a strange dream of a cynical smile and crimson eyes and sacrifice far greater than anything he could have imagined. It brings him back, and the false life flows within him again, like the rising of the tide.  
  
During the course of his thoughts, he realizes, the first flame has flickered and died. His heart clenches at the irony. And for a long moment, he stares at the remaining flame, fighting the darkness alone with all the strength it possesses, fighting a losing battle that is understood in too many ways.  
  
He brings his thumb and forefinger together, extinguishing the last flame between his fingers, deep calluses shielding his hand from any hint of physical pain.  
  
It is a promise of another kind. It is the last promise he intends to make.  
  
Alone, he embraces the Pure Heart of Darkness. It is the closest thing to peace he has, the closest thing to the death that eluded him over a decade ago.  
  
In the darkness, he almost smiles, his eye wide open to the emptiness that resides within the four walls of the room, granted the illusion of blindness and oblivion. His lips move, silently, and for a moment, he wonders if he hears the sound of wings, beating weakly against the cool night air.  
  
I've found that I belong here.  
  
- - -  
  
5.11.02 -- 6.55 a.m.  
  
Blame it on the sleep deprivation, the smashing pumpkins/radiohead playlist, and the fact that this song absolutely hated me. e_e;; I downloaded it, and listened a few times...but it didn't give me any solid ideas on how to make something that people wouldn't hate me for. Probably the biggest qualm I have with a great deal of lyrics is the really good ones are are written in first-person, and if you don't want to write a first-person, it leaves you with a lot less to work with and a big screaming headache. (I've got the headache to prove it, too.) So I hope at least someone liked this ficling.  
  
Um. Lyrics are from 'home', by Depeche Mode, which I have never listened to before I got the lyrics. The tone of the song seemed to be a bit lighter than what the fic turned out to be, with at least a little glimmering of hope. It seems that Auron kinda missed the hope train, here, but then again, I was feeling a little out of things during the course of writing it. (And also, Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' got in my way...by far, the most addictive book I've ever touched. And probably one of the most inspiring.)  
  
And now it's 7 a.m., and I'm sick, and I'm exhausted. So miri is going to go to her room to work on FFX some more, the second time through. This probably will involve falling asleep in the middle of a battle, but oh well, ne? I'm not real picky right now. Here's the lyrics.  
  
"Home"  
  
Depeche Mode  
  
Here is a song from the wrong side of town  
  
Where I'm bound to the ground by the loneliest sound  
  
And it pounds from within and is pinning me down  
  
Here is a page from the emptiest stage  
  
A cage or the heaviest cross ever made  
  
A gauge of the deadliest trap ever laid  
  
And I thank you for bringing me here  
  
For showing me home  
  
For singing these tears  
  
Finally I've found that I belong here  
  
The heat and the sickliest sweet smelling sheets  
  
That cling to the backs of my knees and my feet  
  
Well I'm drowning in time to a desperate beat  
  
And I thank you for bringing me here  
  
For showing me home  
  
For singing these tears  
  
Finally I've found that I belong  
  
Feels like home  
  
I should have known  
  
From my first breath  
  
God send the only true friend I call mine  
  
Pretend that I'll make amends the next time  
  
Befriend the glorious end of the line  
  
And I thank you for bringing me here  
  
For showing me home  
  
For singing these tears  
  
Finally I've found that I belong here 


End file.
